Andrew Welkinson asked:




Gone are the days when a bench stone was only knife sharpening system available to sharpen the blade of your household knife or a professional tool. Now, we have a range of choices that includes Bench Grinder, Chain Saw Sharpeners, and Grinding Wheels, etc. As always, there are two ways to use these tools of knife sharpening business: a right way and a wrong way. The right way will help you get most out of your knife sharpening system and the use the wrong way might blunt the edge of your knives and tools, if not break it. And we obviously will talk about the right way here.

5 tips to get most out of a Knife Sharpening System

Tip 1: get zircon alumina oxide based grinding wheel

Although aluminum oxide is the most common material used in a grinding wheel, I will suggest you to go for zircon alumina as it works best with steel and certain types of metal alloys. Grinding wheel that has zircon alumina in it will be durable.

Tip 2: Look at the grit size of the grinding wheel

Grit size is another thing you need to look at while deciding on a grinding wheel. A higher number in the context of grit size means finer grain and a lower number means coarser grain. Keep this in mind and this will decide the output of your knife sharpening system.

Tip 3: Ensure steadiness of bench grinder wheel for better accuracy

A bench grinder is cheaper sharpening equipment that can be used to sharpen kitchen knives, drill bits, hand tools, and cutters, etc. The wheel which is used in this sharpening equipment comes of different sizes. You not only need to find the right wheel size for the bench grinder tool you will use for your sharpening system, but you will also need to use a tool rest to provide steadiness to the wheel. This has significant impact on sharpening accuracy.

Tip 4: Choose automatic chain sharper over manual one

This is no-brainer, but still I thought to mention it here. Automatic chain sharpener will discount the human error from the equation. When using an automatic chain sharpener, you will not require caring for the proper placement of the sharper tooth, or care for pulling the head promptly up.

Tip 5: Go with a professional knife sharpener

Well, at the first glance this tip may look out of the league. But just one closer look will tell you how wrong your presumption was, particularly when you need to sharpen your professional tools. All knife sharpening systems work great, but only when handled by a qualified person. Let go of your DIY (Do it yourself) attitude, it will hurt your business, and hire a pro to do this job. There are quite a few available.

Don’t pinch pennies if you can save dollars in price of your professional tools by hiring someone who is into knife sharpening business for many years.

Bud1%  @

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Filed under: Knife Sharpening

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